The present invention relates generally to the field of lighting devices and in particular to projection lighting used for emitting soft light onto targets, such as statues, artwork, landscaping, displayed products, film and video production, photography, etc.
Projection lighting used for spot and floor lighting applications is well known in the art. It is unknown, however, to use projection lighting for soft lighting of a subject.
Lighting fixtures generally include a housing, a reflector, a conventional bulb, and a lens or window. Many configurations are known, each of which provides a different lighting effect. The reflector typically has a reflective mirror which faces the illuminated target area. Reflectors with elliptical-shaped surfaces are also commonly known.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,904,417 to Hewett is directed to a lighting apparatus consisting of an arc lamp, an elliptical reflector which completely surrounds the arc lamp, at least one lens which is positioned in front of the arc lamp and the reflector and a shutter which dims the amount of light that emanates from the arc lamp. The arc lamp and reflector are disposed at a fixed distance to one another.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,110,009 to Bunch discloses multiple parabolic Fresnel reflectors that are gimbaled to follow the sun.
An elaborate multi-piece light source device having a discharge lamp, an elliptical mirror reflector which surrounds the discharge lamp and a mechanism for changing the position of the discharge lamp is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,123,429 to Osawa.
It would be desirable to provide a soft light-producing device which concentrates soft light to a well defined local area, and which has a minimal number of pieces, is adjustable to provide a range of light rays, and does not have components which are intricate and difficult to operate and expensive to manufacture and maintain. These problems and deficiencies exist in the prior art and are solved by the present invention in the manner described below.